AMD Blasts Intel for Atom S1200 "Centerton" Microserver CPU

On 12/12/12, Intel decided to finally join the battle in the growing micro server field. Threatened by the rise of microserver announcements from Dell, IBM, Tyan, SeaMicro, Supermicro and others, the chip manufacturing giant is trying to counter the upcoming hybrid x86/ARM processors from AMD, and 64-bit ARM processors from Applied Micro and Samsung Electronics.

One of the reasons why SeaMicro was acquired by AMD was the frustration held by Andrew Feldman and the rest of the SeaMicro management team, who were shipping a growing number of micro servers to Amazon, Facebook, Google and other data center vendors, but Intel was busy shoving Xeon down their throats, while in fact – customers wanted Atom.

That frustration yielded to the highest density AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon configurations, but their bread and butter were clients like the above mentioned trio, who want the highest compute density as possible. After all, for every smartphone device activated today (around 1.5 million devices activated daily), you need to have a processor on the other side that will serve the smartphone. Remember, without synchronization services, the smartphones of today would be as interactive as the mobile phones from 1990s, and this is exactly the field where Intel’s own bread and butter came, since the telco and service vendors bought millions of Xeon processors.

That’s why we usually have a good laugh on analysts claiming that Intel missed the mobile boat, while the company was earning billions in net income based on the explosion of the mobile space. However, with AMD now owning SeaMicro and Applied Micro and Samsung becoming more aggressive, Intel learned that they have to react, launching the Centerton processor for micro server space.

AMD contacted us with the following lead in, and we’ll leave you to decide whom to align with. As always, Bright Side of News* and its publisher, Bright Side Network Inc. are neutral in the case.

"In a veiled attempt to rewrite history, last week Intel drug a fairly unknown engineer out of its labs to talk about its "history" in micro server development. But don’t let this fool you. Intel?s "history" with micro servers has been very short.

A few points to keep in mind while participating in the press conference and writing your stories tomorrow:

The original SeaMicro SM10000 server used Intel?s Atom processor, but Intel was not supportive of this. For years, the company fought SeaMicro on their choice of processor.

Almost two years ago, Intel had a 64-bit, dual-core Atom processor part made for SeaMicro, but this processor was not promoted by Intel.

Intel has insisted for years that micro servers not be more than 10 percent of the market. Are they back-peddling?

Intel is way behind on small cores. They have no cell phone market share, little tablet market share, and now they are threatened that they will lose server market share. AMD and its SeaMicro technology are leading the charge in micro server technology and development. We recently announced a technology partnership with ARM and plans to roll out micro servers using ARM technology. It?s understandable that Intel is threatened, but we would like to make sure that everyone has the facts straight."

About the AuthorTheo Valich

Focused on creating synergy between various industries, creating next-gen solutions.Passionate about the new and emerging technologies. Work experience spans from game development and event organizing, editing magazine and on-line publications to aerospace development.Specialties: Team Leadership / Management / Technical Consultant / Funding.Enjoys travelling around the world and meeting new people. :)